Let Me Off at the Top!: My Classy Life and Other Musings (3 page)

THE END

I loved that homemade pipe flute. Dizzy Gillespie used to make me get up onstage with him and play that thing until my mouth would bleed. Maybe I’m misremembering this part. I’ll fact-check it one more time before I finally commit it to paper though. Dexter Gordon, Art Blakey, even the older guys, Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet, came by. Hey, I get it, if you don’t want to believe any of this I can’t blame you. Anyway, I picked up a little something from each one of these jazz masters—you know what? I think the whole “jazz flute” stuff should stay out of the novel, come to think of it. It’s too ridiculous even if it did really happen. I will simply say this: Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan taught me, an eleven-year-old boy, the rudiments of jazz improvisation in the alley behind Pinky’s Inferno one night in Haggleworth, Iowa. That’s solid enough information that is very believable. (I have no idea if
this is going to hurt or help my credibility here, but just down the alley from us Jack Kerouac was getting a blow job from Allen Ginsberg. More than likely this can be corroborated in their own writings. Those guys wrote an awful lot.) With all these hep cats coming through Haggleworth in the fifties I became the source for their drug habits. I had an in with some of the dealers in the area and I would score smack for the musicians in exchange for music lessons. I quickly learned to cook it so they could fix up before their sets. Forget it. This sounds impossible to me. I know what happened but none of this reads real. I’m just going to go with this: I have a passion for jazz flute. I got it from somewhere. It’s part of who I am. There.

When my brothers and I weren’t beating on each other we would roam the streets looking for any other kind of fun we could get into. These days you would call us a “street gang” but in those days it was just considered horsing around. The regular folks of Haggleworth, when not scared of falling into the hot ground below their feet, were quite comically terrified of the Burgundys. There was a saying around Haggleworth that mothers told their children. It went something like this: “Eat your vegetables or the Burgundy boys will beat the living shit out of you.” Silly really. Men would sometimes refer to a black eye as a “Burgundy.” Derrick Burgundy, the second-oldest of my brothers, did do acts of violence that transcended the usual fun boy stuff and he was gunned down by a posse, which absolutely nobody had any objection to … but that was only
one Burgundy in eight who was a bad egg. Our reputation as town bullies didn’t mean much to us. We just laughed it all off and had a good time. The only townsfolk who were not scared of the Burgundys were the Haggleworths. They were the only other prominent family in Haggleworth and because of their last name they felt they owned the whole town. It was nonsense of course. Shell Oil owned Haggleworth. (That’s why there was no real government or police or any order whatsoever. It was the reason why my father, a strict Darwinist, loved the town.) But the Haggleworths erected a museum in honor of their founding father. Some of them still practiced their pious religion of penis worship, but for the most part they were an uncultured, rangy bunch of derelicts who ate cat food and lived in caves. Some others lived on Willow Street in large Victorian houses. They did manage to build one impressive building downtown, a great big marble and granite Roman-looking thing. It was a sort of clubhouse and harkened back to a more forward-looking time in Haggleworth when money was flowing into the city from foreign investors and sex perverts. They called this huge building “the Courthouse.” They even carved the name “Courthouse” into the stone above the door. No one recognized it as an actual courthouse unless you had to pay a ticket or get a marriage license. Shell Oil certainly had no use for it. And no Burgundy ever stepped foot in it as far as I know.

The Haggleworths really stuck their noses up at the rest of us … which was laughable really, because they were descended from whores mainly. A Burgundy, upon encountering a Haggleworth in the street, would make a point of reminding the
Haggleworth of his or her ignominious lineage with something pithy like “How’s it going, son of a whore?” To which a Haggleworth might come back at a Burgundy with something like “When was the last time you took a bath?” (It was a fair blow as we never took them growing up.) Then a little boxing might ensue and depending on the number involved in the conflict some more pushing and shoving, and then usually a kind of riot would break out with fires and broken glass and such. Totally predictable small-town-type stuff. A bygone era really. Apple pie. Fishing villages. I had a lot of respect for the Haggleworth boys and girls. They could fight like devils. Many nights after a riot I would find myself limping home because they had gotten the best of me. I can laugh about it now. Heck, I laughed about it then.

And then there was Jenny Haggleworth. She was simply a dream. Every boy in town was in love with her. She was the kind of girl that if you saw her at the malt shop, your heart just stopped—fiery red hair, long legs, the softest hands, like two dove wings. Her eyes were like enchanted emeralds. She was a cross between Rita Hayworth and Grace Kelly, and me being twelve years old I was head over heels in love with her. She was twenty-eight and had a job in the mining office.

Because she was a Haggleworth and I was a Burgundy it was a forbidden love but one that I knew I would risk. I also knew that if ever my secret was revealed the whole Haggleworth clan would chase me down and throw me into Dutchman’s Dungeon—a fire pit so deep and terrifying that years later when the Army Corps of Engineers were called in to cap it off they turned tail and ran out of there faster than baboons
running from a ghost lion. To this day its location isn’t on any map and is a well-kept government secret. I know how to get there, of course, as does anyone who grew up in Haggleworth, but we have all signed a presidential oath of secrecy demanding that we never reveal its whereabouts. Among many others over the years I took noted tennis legend and feminist Billie Jean King up there one night with the intent of throwing her in. I was steaming mad at her—I still am but I’m not a murderer. Billie Jean King knows the whereabouts of Dutchman’s Dungeon; so do famed quarterback Roman Gabriel and legendary funnyman Dicky Smothers and many more. Jenny and I would meet in a small clearing in the woods that was unknown but to her and me. The sunlight splashed through the leafy canopy of maple and oak, dappling spots of light on a quiet glade no bigger than a bedroom. It was our hideaway. We talked and held hands, and occasionally I was rewarded with a kiss from her soft lips. I lived for those kisses. I saved our correspondences, which one day I will publish as
The Love Letters of Ron Burgundy and Jenny Haggleworth
. I think mankind would benefit greatly from reading them, with the disclaimer that these are the simple yearnings of a twelve-year-old boy addressing his love sixteen years his senior. Here are just a few exchanges.

Pages and pages of suchlike correspondence poured forth from the two of us. Volumes of letters, enough to fill at least forty leather-bound books. Some years back I saw an advertisement in the popular fashion magazine
Jiggle
for a book-binding device. It came with leather sheets, needles, high-test threading and plans for a build-your-own press. I don’t know what I was thinking! I’m all thumbs when it comes to crafts! Many of you may recall I did the news with my hands bandaged for a three-month stint. I explained on air that I had rescued a child from a hospital fire. We found a baby and a mother who needed a couple of bucks and set up a story, all in good fun. What really happened was that I tried to bind those letters with that complicated binding setup! I tore up my hands pretty good. I got a chuckle out of that.

Eventually the lovers were discovered. In a town of three hundred it’s hard to keep a secret. The Haggleworth clan found out I was diddling their sister and I was jumped and roped and dragged behind Jenny’s car as she drove through the streets of Haggleworth. These were lawless days when
men took it upon themselves to impose justice. Jazz great Erroll Garner was in town doing a two-week stint at Pinky’s Inferno. He saw me being dragged through town and went off to get my brothers. I guess their hatred for the Haggleworths was greater than their hated for me, because pretty quickly all eight of the Burgundy boys were in town. A verbal back-and-forth rapidly escalated to a situation where the National Guard was called in. Some people were burned pretty badly, that I do remember.

After the bloodiest day in Haggleworth history, Jenny and I agreed it was best to take some time off. She left town one night with jazz great Thelonious Monk and then was married to Jack Paar for a while. I can’t say for sure why Jenny Haggleworth, a twenty-eight-year-old model and Miss Iowa, was so infatuated with a twelve-year-old boy, but I had a couple of theories. One was pretty basic. At twelve I was already beginning to show signs of the future girth for which I would become somewhat legendary. I could see, looking down into my pants, something I would enjoy looking at and talking to for many years to come. Some women have called it Pegasus, after the winged horse of Greek mythology. The Lord Jesus Christ works in mysterious ways when he hands out lower body parts! Some men are blessed with extraordinary length but not much girth. Others have been awarded great girth but less length, and then … there are a select few who are granted the whole wonderful package, girth and length. I’m one of those guys who got just the girth. I wouldn’t trade it for nothing—except more length. I know for a fact Jenny was transfixed by my reproductive parts because in some of
our more tender and romantic moments she would yell out, “Show me that stack of pancakes!” or “Gimme that can of beans!” My understuff was and has been a source of great pride for me but not my greatest. If I had to guess at what body part Jenny Haggleworth and a million other women were attracted to most I would have to say it was my hair.

First of all I’d like to dispel the nine most popular myths about my hair.

MYTH NUMBER 1:
My hair is called Andros Papanakas. It is not. I have no name for my hair.

MYTH NUMBER 2:
My hair was bestowed upon me by the gods. This one is hard to dispel. It would have been just like Zeus to make such a gift, or Hermes, but even though I have called on these two gods many times I have never been told specifically by either one that I was given my hair, so I have to say no to the gift-from-the-gods theory.

MYTH NUMBER 3:
My hair is insured by Lloyd’s of London
for one thousand dollars. Nope! It’s fifteen hundred, thank you.

MYTH NUMBER 4:
My hair won’t talk to my mustache. This is basically true but I would hardly call that a myth.

MYTH NUMBER 5:
My hair starred in the movie
Logan’s Run
. It was definitely up for the part of Logan but that eventually went to Michael York. He did an excellent job in the film and to this day it’s still considered the best film of all time.

MYTH NUMBER 6:
My hair on my head is the exact same as the hair on my crotch. Don’t I wish!

MYTH NUMBER 7:
My hair was the principal cause of the overthrow of the Chilean government in ’73. This one is true. Look it up.

MYTH NUMBER 8:
Each strand of my hair carries the DNA for not only a complete Ron Burgundy clone but also a duck-billed platypus. This is incorrect. Scientists at Georgetown University studying my hair strands have detected the DNA from eight different semiaquatic mammals. The platypus is nowhere in sight.

MYTH NUMBER 9:
I wear a toupee. Sure, I wear a toupee, and women don’t have vaginas and cats don’t have dongs! Seriously, this is not a myth, just an insult. Stop it. This is my hair. You can’t have it. You can’t buy it. You can’t burgle it, but you can enjoy it on top of my leathery oversized head.

I would love to be able to report to you that my hair is the
work of many hours of teasing, combing, conditioning, dyeing, fluffing and whatever else men do for vanity’s sake, but it’s simply not the case. I was born with my hair and that’s that. I could be cruising down the road in a new convertible sports car with a topless beauty queen at my side. She could be feeding me a thick New York strip steak and pouring me a tall glass of scotch as I drive. In the backseat of the car there could be a stuffed bear and Johnny Carson, but as that car sped by, most guys on the street would look up and say to themselves, “Man, I wish I had that hair.” It’s just a simple fact. My hair is great. I’ve always had it, literally, from the day I came out of the womb. From what I was told, on first seeing me come into this world the doctor and the nurse stood dumbfounded and then ordered the entire hospital into the delivery room because they thought perhaps they had witnessed the second coming of Christ! NO, they hadn’t! It was just me, Ron Burgundy, and my perfect hair.